


Of All the Bars in Naboo, You Had to Walk Into Mine

by Darth_Videtur



Series: Master and Apprentice [8]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Darth Plagueis - James Luceno, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Apprentice Legislator Palpatine, As much as he can be, Disturbing Themes, F/M, Flashbacks, Gen, M/M, Palpatine attempts to be normal, Planet Naboo (Star Wars), Sidious sneaking around behind Plagueis' back, Sidious wants a girlfriend, Sith, Sith Shenanigans, Sith Training, Slash, Sneaking Around, Theed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-03-03 17:35:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13346139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darth_Videtur/pseuds/Darth_Videtur
Summary: Young Sheev Palpatine finds himself nursing a drink in his favorite bar in the less reputable part of Theed. Alone with his thoughts and with his Master Darth Plagueis away on business, he finds himself looking forward to the distant future, but when a young woman arrives at his table, she messes everything up.





	Of All the Bars in Naboo, You Had to Walk Into Mine

Beginning back in his middle teen years, Palpatine used to frequent a bar and restaurant low down on the banks of a small branch of the Solleu River, in a section of the picturesque city that tourists and rich benefactors tended to avoid like the Blue Shadow Virus. This particular part of Theed received little attention even from most of its own citizens, which made it the perfect place to disappear on a planet that contained little vice or chances to taste the darker aspects of life.

 

He liked it there, and not for the absence of law. Contrary to his father’s assumptions, Palpatine cared very deeply about law and order, just not of the arbitrary sort Cosinga’s ilk attempted to enforce. Only his vision could ever suffice, and he knew what he wanted.

 

No, he liked it here because people wore no pretenses in the Gurney Gatehouse, didn’t try to pretend they cared about anything but themselves. Honesty had been rare in his life, between the lies his father fed him and the lies he spun to protect his fragile bits of autonomy. Cosinga had no idea he went there; the beating would have been particularly harsh if the haughty nobleman had discovered his son “slumming” with the dregs of Theed’s society.

 

When Plagueis had accepted him as his new apprentice in the Order of the Sith Lords at seventeen years of age, Palpatine continued to visit the small bar, though his perceptions slowly changed. The people still played games with each other, but now the games were obvious and pathetic in the scalding light of the Force, the power of the Dark Side that was growing stronger in him daily, and he saw only self-obsessed fools prattling on about petty matters. Still… something drew him back on occasion, when he did not have duties to Plagueis or the Legislature, to nurse his favorite drink and watch the crowds.

 

He always enjoyed watching people. Unnoticed. Unbothered. Wondering who might be turned with a careful word here, a cautious push there. All a game, all his to someday possess.

 

He did nothing else each time he came, only ordered his drink, a cold wine imported from vineyards halfway across the planet with a sweet - _what Plagueis called “cloying”_ \- edge, sat cloaked in a darkened corner, and watched the people flow in and out like the tides of Naboo’s massive seas. He let the Force roll over his senses. He learned of humanity and other species and all the dark lessons of downfall and hard fortune and desperation by watching and listening to the woe-ridden tales. It both reminded him of his former home life and struck him as entirely alien.

 

He always learned much by listening. It was an underrated ability by nearly everyone he knew, including the old Muun.

 

And then he had grown older, and he passed the two year anniversary of his apprenticeship. Palpatine remembered how he felt then, nineteen years old and in his last moments of relative innocence, believing the worlds would fall into line at his feet with ease. He snorted at the thought. Innocent only in failing to realize how far Plagueis would go to break him into the greatest, most terrible Sith Lord of the Order.

 

He could never have imagined the levels of humiliation Darth Plagueis sought to lay on him, beginning with his harsh violation at Plagueis’s long, cold hands in the depths of Aborah. Even now, twenty-two, no longer a minor, and inured to… to so much, he still flooded with icy rage at the memory of his only choice being taken away, of Plagueis’s inhuman coldness driving into him until his hips jerked off the floor, blooding him, hurting him until he thought he might die from the pain in his abdomen. Never had he felt such pain before, so that even the Force reeled out of his control and blossomed dark and painful under his fevered skin.

 

Never had he been touched like that, never touched there before.

 

Never such helpless humiliation, not even from the hands of his father. Beatings he could handle, insults he could gnaw in anger, but what Plagueis had done to him… it was unforgivable, and he was never forgiving even in the best of circumstances. His master would pay dearly someday. In his darkest moments, he liked to imagine how. In his darkest moments, he still fought the horror of those hands sliding up his thighs, that hideous gash of a mouth descending on him as if to devour his very essence.

 

Always slender, always fragile, especially next to the power of a Muun’s massive spidery hands… with even the Force turned against him… abandoned, lost.

 

Plagueis told him that was the point. _Lose all pretenses, abandon yourself to the Darkness and make it yours when it lowers its guard. The Dark Side must be first wooed, and then commanded, but do not think this will be easy for you._

And it had not. 

 

But he had survived, because if Darth Sidious was anything, he survived to slink away and lick his wounds and plot his revenge and grow stronger. _Much like the Sith Order in general_ , Palpatine mused. He held onto his hate and allowed it to cool.

 

Yet Plagueis had not stopped even there. Palpatine still could not think of the pirates without his hands clenching at his sides until his finely manicured nails threatened to split his delicate skin. He remembered their faces with perfect clarity, their bodies hard and insistent, his utter helplessness to fight back, robbed of the Force in his drugged state. Drugged by the very one who called himself Palpatine’s master.

 

He survived that too. He smiled without warmth at the memory of Lindi’s flesh _tearing_ apart in his bare hands. He had painted the walls of that foul-smelling room with their blood and bodies, ripped the Twi’lek’s heart still beating from its chest cavity, tore out the throat of the begging Weequay, who only hours earlier did not pause before forcing the petrified young human, when Palpatine, not Sidious, no, had finally lost his composure in the waves of pain and _begged_ for mercy.

 

He learned that night that there truly was no mercy. Not for him. Not for the pirates. Not for Plagueis. _Not for the entire galaxy_ , the Dark Side had whispered in his ears until he could hear nothing else but the hissing luxurious syllables of death.

 

Someday…

 

That day, at least, was the last day he begged for anything. _Never again._ Palpatine nudged the slice of fruit in the top of his drink with a slender finger, deaf to the throbbing bar music filling his ears. Begging did no good, and despite knowing that Plagueis was probably amused by his childlike defiance, it had become something of a matter of pride to the young Naboo. A game he could actually win.

 

If he ever begged again, it would be an act only. If he pleaded again, it would only be to win what he wanted. He would expect no mercy, and he would deliver none, for that was the way of life and the Dark Side. One commanded; one did not ask, and if one fell by the wayside, it meant the Force had revealed a fatal weakness, a flaw in the system.

 

He was not weak. He was not flawed. He would bring the Sith into their own.

 

Plagueis told him so during the times when he was feeling benevolent in his own merciless way. He often toyed with Palpatine, hinting at his potential – as if he knew more than Palpatine himself what he was capable of doing, ha! – and attempting to break him like a wild gualama at the same time. Well, Sidious would certainly reshape the galaxy, but without the Muun.

 

The harder his master determined to crush Palpatine, the more Sidious promised that he never would. The Muun had come perilously close once, almost two years ago, when he manipulated the pheromones of a Zeltron slave to blind Palpatine’s senses to his advances. Palpatine bit his lip at the memory, still raw against his cranium. If he allowed it, and he rarely did except to fuel his desire for bloody vengeance, he could remember the pleasant haze of the moment, the blatant, false longing he experienced for his master.

 

It had been false. He felt nothing for the old Muun. Nothing. But it still haunted him, the memory of wanting him, of asking – _wanting_ – him to fuck his body like some two-credit whore. Wanting to see his long face. He remembered wanting to tear out his own tongue even while asking. For a horrible time, his mind had not belonged fully to him, but enough that he was aware of every glorious sensation shooting through his skin, every twitch of the Muun’s cold, massive cock thrusting in between his legs.

 

He had enjoyed it. Like a bitch in heat.

 

He still flushed to think of it, how he had moaned and writhed so wantonly under the much taller, longer humanoid. How good Plagueis’s cool body had felt against his hot skin, how he had felt in him, so large, so… filling.

 

And then Plagueis had reveled in his transparent horror and rage upon discovering the Zeltron’s influence, laughed harshly and fed on his betrayed anger.

 

_‘Such anger…’ Plagueis chuckled days later, still dazed himself by the experience._

 

The memory of the agonizing lightning whispered in his bones. His thighs clenched even now at the phantom sensation of a lightsaber - _too long, too deep_ \- forced hard into his body, the obscene threats curling around his ears as he bled and whimpered and thought that surely he was going to die, naked and shamefully impaled on his master’s hot blade. But even then, he did not beg.

 

He looked death in the eye, didn’t blink. And he survived.

 

The Dark Side honored strength.

 

Two years had passed, and he could not forget the events of that day. He wondered if he would become powerful enough to preclude the need for sleep in the future. He was tired of waking up in darkness, screaming. It was even worse when he woke up hard and aching in his fright, but at least the Force was useful for assuaging the pressure. He searched the Sith archives and available holocrons constantly for ways to reduce his need for the sleep cycle necessary to all humans.

 

He could not wave away memories or nightmares. He would never forgive the Muun.

 

How he loathed it, their relationship in these matters. He loathed every time Plagueis reached out with the Force and manipulated his fragile human shell with all the nerve endings that could so easily be twisted to the Muun’s perverse pleasures, his grasping touch of cold fingertips. He loathed the feeling of Plagueis buried in him, stretching him, burning him with ice and condescending amusement. He hated the sensation of the Muun slipping into his mind and toying with his thoughts and hopes.

 

Sometimes… sometimes he thought he felt a strange sense of attachment from Plagueis from behind the Sith Lord’s impeccable mental shielding, as though the Sith Master felt something more for his apprentice than a simple desire to torture him into perfection, more than a desire to turn him into the perfect Sith. A glimpse of dark affection.

 

A weakness? Too soon to tell, as it might only be another test laid out by his master, but possibly useful, _very_ useful, someday.

 

He knew he should be grateful. Under Plagueis, both figuratively and literally, he was learning the many difficult lessons that would mold him into the unstoppable pinnacle of the Sith Order. His control and skills in fighting, alchemy, survival, Force visions: all improving by leaps and bounds.

 

Unfortunately for others, Palpatine never experienced much success with gratitude. Everyone wanted things from him. His mother had begged - _weak_! - for his compliance. His father had demanded his submission. Plagueis simply… took things from him. His life, his stability, his safety, his body, his will. Plagueis would continue to try to take everything, and he was off to an efficient start.

 

That made him think of Convergence, when Plagueis had stripped him down in his father’s old study.

 

Circumstances were highly suspicious in that. Had Plagueis known of Naboo’s reverence toward images of the dead? Had he known that the Naboo believed in an afterlife in which families were reunited for eternity, generations after generations, that the fathers looked after the sons and the mothers after the daughters from said afterlife, and used images and paintings with which to do it? Palpatine shuddered.

 

He did not really believe such religious superstition, never had. It had been one more point of constant contention between him and his father while growing up. Not enough respect for the family line. But in a tiny corner of his mind that would always belong to Naboo, to his birthplace, whether he liked it or not, Palpatine sincerely hoped it was false.

 

 _If not,_ he thought with a wry twist of his thin lips and another deep drink. _If it is true, he fucked me in front of my father._ A small, disbelieving chuckle escaped his lips, causing a few of the other patrons to turn his way, but he ignored them. _If true, I wonder who was more upset, me or Father? If you can hear me, Cosinga, at least know I had no part in that. I wanted it no more than you did._

Utter foolishness, of course, to think that Cosinga was able to hear him now, and even more so to think he would want to listen to his son if he could. The Force was quickly showing Palpatine that when individuals died, especially non-Force-sensitives, the chances of an afterlife were slim to none. Thank the non-existent gods for that, at least in Cosinga’s case.

 

Death was just… an absolution of self. An emptying of a broken vessel, death.

 

That was all. Yet he thought of Chaos and shivered, pulling his cloak tighter around his shoulders and taking a long draught. If there was a Chaos, he would send Plagueis there someday, and then he himself would find some way to avoid it. Or the nothingness that existed beyond this life. No one and nothing would take him from himself.

 

There was no other option, he ruminated.

 

A thunk. Someone sat down across from him in the small curved booth seating. A woman, dressed in a flowing, semi-transparent outer green gown and darker green undergarments which flashed with hints of silver jewelry. Her dark hair perched, piled high on her head like she was upper society crust.

 

“Hello there,” she said cheerfully and fooling no one, least of all him.

 

“You are one of the prostitutes here,” he said, glancing down at his drink.

 

Her large green eyes narrowed. “Aren’t you a polite one. That’s quite a greeting.”

 

“I meant nothing by it.” Palpatine looked at her more closely. He hadn’t. She was. Some things in life were certain. Bars in this part of Theed had whores, and he had seen her several times before interacting with the customers in ways that clearly indicated she was no mere innocent barmaid.

 

“Well,” she pouted, thick lower lip extending sultry and slow, “You didn’t need to be so obvious about it.”

 

“I despise guessing games.”

 

“That’s too bad. I was going to guess your name,” she smiled at him, undeterred.

 

He grunted. Took another drink. “You couldn’t.”

 

“I’ve seen you here before,” she reached out and lazed a delicate finger around the rim of his glass, easy, slow, seductive. He watched her willingly enough, because she _was_ beautiful. He could appreciate beauty like anyone else. Didn’t mean he wanted to fuck her. Or pay her credits to act like she wanted to fuck him. He would never be like that. Some animal, controlled by its base lusts.

 

“I’ve seen you,” she repeated when he didn’t immediately answer.

 

“Have you?” Palpatine hummed, taking in her face with vague interest. A small upturned nose sat just under the aforementioned large green eyes, full lips too red with lipstick, too ready to accept greedy advances. Her bone structure could best be described as small and compact, with average breasts and wide hips, which were tilted invitingly in his direction.  

 

 _Good for childbearing,_ the late Zeltron’s voice slid unbidden into his memories. Slickened bright pink fingers sliding between his lips, over his tongue, teaching him too much. _Be careful with the women with wide hips, kid. They’ll keep coming back for more until you leave a little something of yourself. Childcare isn’t pretty._

He flushed and looked down at his drink, suddenly disgusted with himself for even looking at her.

 

Her pitiful existence did not matter. This whole fetid place did not matter. Not in the grand scheme of things.

 

“Like what you see?” she purred after he looked down. “A little too much? Are you shy, fella?”

 

He laughed at the idea, startling her with his quiet intensity. “I’ve seen your kind before. You work quickly, in and out and credits are the game with you.”

 

“You’re judging me?” she laughed, her laugh so much different than his, but it held only disbelief and no humor. “Darling, we’ve all got to make our way in this world. I didn’t pick this job because I was thrilled with it.” She stopped suddenly, afraid that she had gone too far and scared off a potential customer.

 

Palpatine did not care if she came or went. He just wanted his drink, wanted to forget for a while. Everything. Think of nothing.

 

Always impossible for him. His mind processed everything. Calculated everything. Analyzed everything. Remembered _everything_.

 

Waiting.

 

She watched him and blurted, “You’re young, aren’t you? How young?”

 

“No younger than you,” he snapped, more than a little irritated by the question. And she _was_ young too, he could sense it. He wondered when she had been forced into this life. It softened the next sentence a fraction, with something both more and less than pity. Understanding. “You can’t be more than twenty-two.”

 

She studied him. “Twenty-one, actually. Been working here since six years ago.”

 

That fit with what his excellent memory told him. He recalled a small slip of a girl, wide green eyes filled with barely hidden terror - _he knew that terror now -_ flitting nervously around the bar when he first visited as a clueless sixteen year old. She had lived a long life for a backstreet prostitute. He glanced over her, cataloguing the changes: fuller hips, firm breasts barely contained in her tunic, a womanly, knowing smile that did not exist six years ago.

 

He twitched down below and found himself slightly astonished. He did not ever come here for the entertainment. He did not ever find himself wanting… that. This was just a normal reaction of a young body next to something alluring, only a physiological response and a weak one at that. He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts.

 

“You okay?”

 

She leaned in, concern in her nakedly greedy eyes. All part of the game, he thought, as she subtly slipped a hand across the gap between the booths to rest it boldly on his upper thigh.

 

It took quite a bit of energy not to obliterate her where she sat. That would be hard to explain to Plagueis and the bar owners. And the Jedi Order.

 

So he settled for hissing, “Don’t touch me!”

 

She pulled away instantly, a flash of fear in her eyes. A tentative smile. “Hey… hey, calm down. I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do, darling. What’s wrong, don’t you like me?”

 

She drew her hands up her own thighs now, the silky green material bunching between her legs and revealing a creamy expanse of smooth skin on both sides. He did not look away, though the shame and arousal hit him hard when she spread her legs and looked at him under half-closed eyes. Come hither. Enjoy. Do what you want.

 

Palpatine swallowed. His desire instantly fled. He didn’t enjoy this. Not this. This was only his conditioning, his teachings that Plagueis forced on him. “You... you shouldn’t do that to yourself.”

 

She leaked a hint of genuine hurt and rejection. “I’m a whore, as you pointed out earlier so kindly,” and he actually liked the bite of anger in her voice. It made her lower, richer, more like a human instead of an empty-headed receptacle. “What else am I supposed to do with myself?”

 

He dug in his pocket for the credit chip without thinking about it and tossed it at her. She caught it against her breasts and looked at him, bewildered. He shrugged. “Not be a whore for a night.” It was more than she could make with twenty customers, and when she realized it, her eyes bulged up at him, her beautiful lips hanging open. A glint of suspicion surfaced.

 

“Why would you give me this?”

 

“Don’t look a gift-gualama in the mouth,” Sidious said, tight, hating, and suddenly, irrationally angry, and he needed to leave before he ripped that pretty head from those pretty bare shoulders. He didn’t know, and he didn’t want her knowing he didn’t know. Nothing made sense anymore: he needed to clear his head. He shouldn’t have taken that last drink. He should have practiced his sorcery before indulging.

 

When he managed to stumble off the booth and out into the street, he leaned against the doorframe and ran a trembling hand through his shaggy hair. Palpatine was a young man, with a young body. Someday, Sidious would be able to control his body as easily as he controlled his discipline as a Sith Lord. He looked forward to that day as he stepped out into the dark street, barely lit by overheads, and took off through the pushing crowd toward the less busy part of town.

 

The night was warm and muggy, and his blood was buzzing with hunger, his head with emotions that he needed to manage. Needed to clear.

 

He knew how. Hot fire was not his way; cold ice was. Sidious let the hatred drift on the currents of the Dark Side. Calm. Apex predator. Picking up the pace, his boots cracking softly along the pavement, he turned aside down a well-known alley on the right. This eventually led back to the higher class neighborhoods, but here it was a sure-fire method to attract the attention he was looking for tonight.

 

Sidious caught a glimpse of a streetwalker pulling a large humanoid further into the shadows as he passed. He nodded to her, fingers climbing to work the latch loose from the collar of his shirt. He added a playful saunter to his hips as the Zeltron had taught him, raised his eyebrows invitingly when he spotted his targets, two large aggressive-looking foreign men lurking by the entrance to a badly camouflaged brothel. Yes. They would do nicely.

 

The Dark Side rose in his throat and he pushed it down. _Not yet. Wait, easy._ It filled his blood with freezing fire as he passed them, felt their eyes roving boldly over him and his inviting easy gait, heard the slaps of their shoes as they set out after him. He led them down a smaller alley yet, where the voices of others faded away and the alley was tight and small and dark, with glints of eyes and teeth and skin.

 

He kept walking until they were alone.

 

“Hey, you,” one of them said at last, raising a hand to his shoulder and stopping him. Sidious turned, smirking up. He could feel the man’s intent in the Force. This one was determined to fuck him whether he consented or not. How fun this would be. The other was less sure, but he would do.

 

“You want this?” he asked, roving his hands down his front, catching his fingers in his loosened tunic and lifting it up and off in one swift motion. _No good getting blood on it_ , he thought as he dropped it off to the side. He had to walk back after all, and blood made people scream. Funny, that. How little they knew, how good blood could be, the hot spurt of life drifting away under his fingers….

 

“Yeah, I do, you little slut. Where’ve you been all my life?” The man was practically panting with eagerness. Disgusting, already reaching for the buckle of his belt, struggling to pull it off in his haste. The other man grinned and stepped closer to run a rough hand over Palpatine’s bared chest. Sidious pushed him playfully away.

 

“Only one at a time, gentlemen. At least to start.” He smiled, showing unfriendly teeth. They didn’t notice. “And you are certainly in luck tonight. Do you know why?”

 

The first man chuckled harshly. “Enlighten us.”

 

“Because…” Sidious slid the vibroblade carefully from its internal sheath on his hip.

 

He smiled wider at them, fed on the sudden tension. “Tonight, I’m in the mood to play.”

 

The second man started screaming when the head of the first hit the pavement with a wet slap.

 

But he wouldn’t die for a much longer time.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Auugh! The Master and Apprentice Series is back in full swing! Angst alert for poor Sidious.  
> 2\. Just maybe, he'll find something a little less traumatic and a little more wholesome on Naboo.  
> 3\. Hang in there, Palps!


End file.
